Pilgrims never are, and the village people could be hurt even in those pits. So I solved the problem by hiring them all as servants to the Enchantress.”
Derk gave her an appalled look. “What with?”
Mara frowned the two little creases tighter yet. “What do you mean, what with?”
Derk swallowed and remembered he was meaning to be very careful and tactful tonight. She’s borrowed a lot of money from someone, he thought. I have to go even more carefully. “Mara,” he said, “you aren’t being paid for being the Enchantress. And I’ve been fined a hundred gold before we even start. We haven’t any money to hire a whole village.”
Mara gave an odd little smile. “Oh, I think I can manage.”
She’s borrowed a massive amount! Derk thought. Dear gods! “Have you hired Fran Taylor and Old George as well? I went to a lot of trouble emaciating them.”
Mara chuckled. “Fran wants to stay picking about in the ruins, but I love Old George! He’s far too good to waste on the village. I want him to be my former lover that I’ve drained to skin and bone. The Pilgrims should be really impressed.”
Derk watched all his plans for a mermaid daughter dwindle into unimportance and then to nothing. His chest hurt. Mara’s going to leave me, he thought. She’s going to leave me for this person she’s borrowed money from. What shall I do? He had always been afraid of this. Wizards’ marriages almost never lasted. Nearly every wizard he knew had one broken marriage, and some had more. That young Finn was on his second marriage; Barnabas’s wife had walked out years ago; even Querida had been married once. Derk miserably supposed he should consider himself lucky that he and Mara had lasted eighteen years.
Mara meanwhile had turned to Shona. “Shona, darling, have you made up your mind yet? I want your help over at Aunt’s house more than ever now, with Querida out of action. I’m going to need lots of silly fashionable clothes – the kind you and Callette are both so good at inventing. What does Callette say?”
“Callette’s on her hundred and nineteenth gizmo,” Shona said. “She’ll need another day at least to do the rest. She says she might come over then. But—” She shot a look at the brooding Derk. “Mum, I don’t think I can come. There’d be no one but Lydda to look after things here.”
“I’ve said I can manage,” Lydda said with her beak full.
“I can help here too,” Elda muttered into a pile of fruit. “Everyone thinks I’m too small.”
“Not so much small as young,” Mara told Elda. “You are only ten, love, and I want you to come over to me with Callette. And why should Lydda do everything here? What’s wrong with you, Don, or you, Blade?”
Don sat with a raw chop halfway to his beak, Blade sat with a cooked one on the end of his fork. They exchanged looks of panic and consternation.
“Or Kit?” added Mara.
“May I consider?” Shona asked rather hectically. “Perhaps I’ll come when Callette’s finished – and there isn’t a piano in Aunt’s house, is there?”
“Yes there is,” said Mara. She got up. “That’s settled then. I’ll expect you and Callette and Elda the day after tomorrow. You’re going to love my pink embroidered hangings!”
Breaking up the family too, Derk thought miserably as Mara rushed away.
Blade, fairly naturally, tried to rush away too as soon as supper was over. But Shona deftly seized him by one arm and dragged him through to the kitchen, where Elda was swilling plates with careless abandon.
“Blade, you really have to help me do something!” Shona whispered. “Haven’t you noticed?”
“Noticed what?” Blade asked.
“Mum and Dad. They’re terminally not getting on.”
“They’re always quarrelling. You worry too much,” Elda said, shoving three wet plates into the rack.
“Wash those again,” Shona said automatically. “No, that’s just the trouble – they’re not quarrelling. Dad should have exploded just now about the money, and he hardly said a word.”
Blade sighed, knowing that his carefree time was over. “I see what you mean.”
“Bhrright!” Beauty remarked as she wheeled down towards the main courtyard.
“It surely is,” Derk agreed. “Umru has to find something to do with his money.” He sighed as Beauty descended. He had been trying hard not to think of money, or of how much Mara might have borrowed, or of the mermaid daughter they would never have now. Not thinking of these things left a cold emptiness somewhere in the middle of his mind. I must think of an entirely different creature, he told himself as Beauty’s hooves touched the ground.
Willing, fanatical-looking men rushed to look after Beauty. More of them rushed to conduct Derk to the presence of Umru. He was handed over to a covey of acolytes, who handed him to priests, who handed him in turn to more priests, who led him through long upstairs cloisters painted with gold leaf to where Umru was waiting, smiling, in an empty sun-filled room.
“You could have landed on my balcony, if I had known your horse had wings,” Umru said to him. “Come. Sit.” He led Derk to a couple of throne-like chairs.
This room was only empty after a fashion, Derk thought, settling among carved cedarwood and gold. The floor was a pattern of blocks of wood, variously scented and coloured. Astoundingly beautiful silk rugs lay here and there upon it. The ceiling was a masterpiece of marble carved to resemble a tree in bloom, and the many narrow window frames were like trees too, with fruit. In between, the walls were inlaid with more masterpieces in coloured stone. But it was still an austere room, fit for a priest. Umru was a funny mixture, Derk thought. His vestments looked simple, but the cost of them would buy Derkholm several times over. Derk suddenly noticed that his own boots had not been cleaned after milking. And one of his cuffs was fraying.
“I’ve come to ask you to help me,” he said, tucking the offensive cuff under and doubling his feet back until the boots were under the sumptuous chair.
“And you can help me, my friend,” said Umru. “As you must have seen from your black book and your maps and lists, the battles are scheduled to take place this year just beyond this city of mine, all over my fields and farms – all over this land that I have worked so hard to make prosper. What am I to do?”
